the books of tom canford

Tom Miller in front of deserted railroad warehouse, Greensboro, A abama, 2006.﻿﻿So why the name TOM CANFORD? That name was cobbled together from part of his real name (Tom) and one fake name (Canford). Canford sounds like it ought to be somebody's name, but it's not. Once upon a time back in the dim dark past when Tom was working in name clearances for television shows like Dr. Kildare, Canford turned up on a list of safe names. If you had a raping murdering drug-addicted lying traitor in your story, you didn't really want to name him John Q. Smith for fear that one of the real ones out there might take offense and sue. Canford sounded like a real name but nobody was named Canford. Hence he couldn't sue. If a dastardly villain could be named Canford, then why not an author? Yeah, but why did he want a pseudonym in the first place? The problem was his real name: Tom Miller. Thousands of them out there. Check it on Google sometime and just see how many hits you get. Heck, narrow it down to the Internet Movie Database and you'll find some 47 in the movie business alone (of which Tom is number III). He played around with it a bit: Thomas Canford. Tomas Canford. Tom Canford Miller. Then he decided to opt for simple. Even his real name had its variations over time. During the Second World War, the United States Coast Guard knew him as Tommy Miller, and that name stuck with him through his post-war college years in Los Angeles and well into the 1950s. His family called him Tommy (still do) and so did his friends from the time. Actually, if you dig way back to the certificate of his birth in Carrier Mills, Illinois, you'll discover another interesting variant: Tomi James Miller. Nobody knows where that Tomi came from. Maybe the registrar of births simply made a mistake, or maybe a drop of ink got smeared. When he moved to New York, he was already Tom Miller, using middle initial J (for James) for more formal occasions. A nice, neat, adult name. The name Miller is itself suspect. however. It is known that even farther back in time, Tom's father, James Clyde Miller, was sired by someone other than his mother's husband. But like his father, Tom was raised a Miller, lived his life a Miller, and died a Miller. A Miller through and through. Except when he wrote.